Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio, 1788

MANASSEH CUTLER AND THE

SETTLEMENT OF OHIO

1788

BY

ROBERT ELLIOTT BROWN, D. D.

Professor of Practical Theology and Human Relations
in the Graduate School of Theology

Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio

An Address Delivered At The Union Sesqui-Centennial

Memorial Service In The First Congregational Church,

Marietta, Ohio, April 10, 1938.

THE MARIETTA COLLEGE PRESS

MARIETTA, OHIO
1938

Copyright, 1938
by the

MARIETTA COLLEGE PEESS

MANASSEH CUTLER AND THE
SETTLEMENT OF OHIO, 1788

A cross-section of the life of the world of 1788 should
hardly fail to hold our attention and interest for at
least a few passing moments. It was marked by the presence
of many great social and political issues; it abounded in
dramatic characters and witnessed an amazing galaxy of
outstanding genius.

France was about to flare up into revolution, a social
upheaval which historians now see as the natural outcome
of the English revolution of 1688 and the American revolu-
tion of 1776. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were to be
on the throne of France for five more years. Let us pause
long enough to pay our respects to the queen whose name
this city bears, who lost her head because she first lost her
heart to the radicals of her age, the American republicans.

George III, who had been ruling England for twenty-
eight years, had lost his American colonies; nevertheless,
he was to have thirty-two more years of rule. Bagehot
might have said that this was another evidence of the
stupidity and the stability of the British government. Fred-
erick the Great of Prussia had been dead two years.

In the field of literature, Cowper was in his decline;
Coleridge and Blake were rising in fame. Burns, the out-
spoken champion of Washington, had still seven years to
live. Wordsworth, who favored both the American and
French revolutions, was eighteen years of age; Scott was
seventeen. Goethe, over in Germany, was thirty-nine.

In music, Beethoven had but recently visited Mozart in
Vienna, astounding him with the evidences of his superb
genius.

In the field of science, Priestly, the discoverer of oxygen,
had not yet migrated from England to Pennsylvania. Watt's
steam engine was three years old. It was growing up, how-
ever, and getting ready to paddle its way across the Atlantic

4 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement op Ohio

Ocean. Lavoissier, the father of modern chemistry, was in
Paris. Ben Franklin, who, like Prometheus of old, had
brought down fire from heaven on a kite string, was the
governor of Pennsylvania. Congress was in session in New
York, and the Constitutional Convention was at work in
Philadelphia, while the incomparable Washington was rest-
ing in Mount Vernon between the storms of the late war
and his first presidency.

The Ohio Valley in 1788 was commanding the attention
of Congress and many forward-looking men on the Eastern
seaboard, and well it might, for the reports of its wide
expanse and its unlimited and varied resources were as
stimulating to the imagination as tales from Marco Polo's
Journeys in Cathay. The ex-revolutionary soldiers quartered
at Newburg on the Hudson saw in this territory an oppor-
tunity for settlement and a realization of promises that had
long been made to them, while many men in Massachusetts
and Connecticut looked to the West as a field where they
might transplant New England institutions and extend New
England influence.

"I hear the tread of the pioneers,
Of nations yet to be

The first low wash of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea."

As to the physical characteristics of the Northwest Terri-
tory, we have an excellent description made by one Colonel
Gordon, an English engineer.

"The country along the Ohio is extremely agreeable, filled
with great plains of the richest soil and exceedingly salu-
brious. One remark of this kind suffices for all that region
bounded by the Western slope of the Allegheny mountains
and extending to the southwest a distance of five hundred
miles, thence to the north as far as the sources of the rivers
that empty into the Ohio and thence eastward along the
hills that separate the lakes from the river Ohio as far
as FrencB- creek. I can from the perfect knowledge

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio 5

which I have of it affirm that the country which I have
just described is the most advantageous, the most fertile
land which is known to any people of Europe whatsoever."

But Colonel Gordon's description is merely a chant com-
pared to the symphonic description of a French writer,
which was published in English at Salem, Massachusetts,
in 1787. Space forbids us to play but a few bars from its
several movements. Of the lands which are watered by the
different rivers emptying into the Ohio, he says, "They are
remarkable for their variety of soil from which results
everything which can contribute to the advantages due to
their local position and which promise the success and the
riches which ought to burst forth among every agricultural
and manufacturing people."

Then he launches into his subject in detail. "The great
level plains which one meets with here and which form
natural prairies, have a circumference of from twenty to
fifty miles; they are found interspersed almost everywhere
along the rivers. These plains have a soil as rich as can be
imagined and which with very little labor can be devoted to
any species of cultivation which one wishes to give it. They
say that in many parts of these prairies one can cultivate
an acre of land per day and prepare it for the plow. There
is no undergrowth on the land ; the trees, which grow very
high and become very large, only need to be deprived of
their bark in order to become fit for use."

In the description of the timber wealth of the region, we
are told that a black walnut tree was found near Muskingum
which measured twenty-two feet in circumference five feet
above the ground, and a sycamore measurd in the same
way had a circumference of forty-four feet. As to the
variety of woods to be found, there are "The sugar maple,
the sycamore, black and white mulberry, black and white
walnut, the chestnut, oaks of every kind, the cherry tree,
beech tree, the elm, the cucumber tree, ironwood, the ash
tree, the aspen, the sassafras, the wild apple tree, and a

6 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement op Ohio

great number of other trees of which it is impossible to
express the names in French."

The country is well supplied with springs, creeks and
rivers. If it did not flow with milk and honey, there were
unlimited lands for pasturage, and sugar to be extracted
from the maple tree. "This garden of the universe," as this
writer describes it, "will bring forth abundant crops of
wheat, rye, corn, barley, indigo and cotton. As the prairies
reek with fertility, so the hills are filled with mineral
wealth." Then follows an enumeration of the kind of game
to be found here : "Stag, fallow, deer, elk, buffalo, and bear."
The wild fowl include turkeys, geese, ducks, swans, teals,
pheasants and partridges. The rivers abound with fish. All
in all the resources of this great empire for manufacture,
shipbuilding and transportation are monumental. This is
but a small sample of the literary lure that was published
in Paris in 1789 and was one of the means used by Joel
Barlow, the Connecticut poet, and other land agents to
promote emigration from France which resulted in the
settlement of a French colony at Gallipolis.

But not everyone had this high opinion of the Ohio Valley
and the Northwest Territory. It is said that Madame
Pompadour urged the French king to sign away his claim
to America in 1763, saying that it was fit only for "bears,
barbarians and beavers." President James Monroe, late in
1785, made a journey westward. He was impressed by the
"miserably poor" character of the country, especially of
the lands near Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, and the Illinois
valley. Robert Livingstone, after having helped to negotiate
the Louisiana purchase, said that it would be a century
before anyone crossed the Mississippi river for settlement.

Against such opinions as these of Pompadour, Monroe
and Livingstone, the vision of Manasseh Cutler is most
noteworthy. Sprague, in his Annals of the American Pulpit,
says, "In 1787 Dr. Cutler published an anonymous pamphlet
which seems not to have been prophetic to a degree truly

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio 7

surprising. He hazarded the prediction that many then
living- would see our great western waters navigated by the
power of steam and that within fifty years the North West
Territory would contain more inhabitants than all of New
England. What seemed at the time a random and most
improbable conjecture has since risen to the dignity of a
prophecy, the fulfillment of which has astounded the world."

"The rudiments of empire here,
Are plastic yet and warm:
The chaos of a mighty world is rounding into form."

Our interest in the settlement of the Northwest, for want
of space if for no other reason, is confined to a relatively
small group including Rufus Putnam, who is affectionaly
called the Father of Ohio, Parsons, Tupper, Sargent, Mills
and Cutler. They were not the first to come to this valley.
They had been preceded by the Indian hunter, the French
voyageur, the colonial scout and squatter. But the group
which we mention came to settle, to govern and develop
a region that had few parallels, if any, for size, wealth, and
accessibility. Even within this group it is not possible to
assign with absolute impartiality the honor due to each
for his share in the Marietta settlement. When George
Washington paid his tribute to the colony here, he made
only a general statement. "No colony in America was ever
settled under such favorable auspices. ... I know many
of the settlers personally and there never were men better
calculated to promote the welfare of such a community."
Thus the high quality of the first settlers received hearty
recognition.

But if we should accept Carlyle's dictum, which has some-
thing to be said for it, viz., "History is biography writ
large," we should still be in a quandry as to who is entitled
to the higher honors — Putnam or Cutler. And in all proba-
bility, we would be forced to the conclusion that each in
his own way made a fundamental contribution, and their
contributions are to be regarded, not as competitive, but
as complementary. Putnam was a soldier, Cutler was a

8 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio

diplomat ; Putnam was a surveyor, Cutler was a social engi-
neer; Putnam was a pragmatist, Cutler was an idealist;
Putnam saw the end and carried out the details, Cutler
saw the means necessary to the end; Putnam knew and
represented the pressing needs of the prospective settlers;
Cutler was conspicuous in inaugurating and achieving the
plan for their settlement.

In selecting Cutler as a focus for our attention, there is
no attempt to distort the true image of history, but with
the full realization that we never can isolate an individual
from his social environment except for the temporary con-
venience of our own thought and purpose.

I. Ancestry and Cultural Background
Manasseh Cutler was born in Killingly, Connecticut, that
is, in the state that held the key to the settlement of North-
ern Ohio, migrating to Massachusetts, the state that in-
spired and directed to a large degree the settlement of
Southern Ohio. He was of English Puritan stock, his family
having come to America from Norfolkshire in 1634. He
grew up on his father's farm, developing early a taste for
learning, especially the natural sciences. Under the tutelage
of the Reverend Aaron Brown, the parish minister, he was
prepared for Yale College, graduating in the class of 1765.
In 1768 he received the degree of Master of Arts and the
degree of Doctor of Laws in 1789 from his alma mater.
After leaving college, he engaged in a variety of activities
before settling down to his life work. He taught school,
studied and practiced law, joined in a local storekeeping
enterprise and made a venture in the whaling industry.
But in 1768, he decided to study theology with his father-
in-law, the Reverend Thomas Balch of Dedham, Massachu-
setts. Before long he was settled as pastor of the Congrega-
tional Church in Ipswich, now Hamilton, Massachusetts,
where he remained for fifty-two years, never receiving a
salary of more than $450 per year.

From the pen of his grandson, Joseph Torrey, we have
a portrait of this man, Manasseh Cutler, who was identified

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio 9

so intimately in founding the state of Ohio and worked so
profoundly in settling its destinies. "His personal appear-
ance was uncommonly prepossessing — a florid complexion;
a good humored expression of countenance; a full-propor'
tioned, well-set frame of body. He was remarkably slow
and deliberate in all his motions. He possessed a natural
dignity of manners, in which there was no air of stiffness
or reserve, but on the contrary the utmost frankness and
cordiality. He was fond of society. His conversation, inter-
spersed with anecdotes and illustrations drawn from a wide
experience of the world, made him a most entertaining and
instructive companion."

In a new country such as ours in 1788 there was an
opportunity and a necessity for developing the many-sided
man. Older civilizations raise specialists; pioneers are
marked by their versatility, for the rule of the wilderness
is diversity or death. We are to see Manasseh Cutler in
a wide variety of roles. The amazing thing is that he had
more than elemental success in the many parts that he
played.

II. The Scientist

Cutler had the instincts and much of the technique of
the scientist. As a farm boy, he grew up with an interest
in the world about him. He had an abnormal curiosity for
the facts and processes that met him on every hand. His
favorite motto was a quotation from Virgil : "Happy is the
man who can recognize the causes of things." Along with
his desire to know, he combined a passion for order,
thoroughness and neatness. On coming home from the
army he turned to medicine, and under the guidance of
Dr. Elisha Whitney he soon gained skill sufficient to enable
him to qualify for medical practice. On one occasion he
looked after forty smallpox patients. He also used the
process of inoculation in his treatment of such cases. After-
wards he seems to have gained a local reputation for his
ability to cope with rattlesnake poisoning. One gains the

10 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio

impression from the accounts left to us that, with modern
training, Cutler could have been a physician of high stand-
ing.

In botany, too, he had an acknowledged place. He has
been declared "The most eminent American botanist of his
time." Making the first catalogue of New England flora,
he identified three hundred and fifty species and classified
them according to the Linnaean system. In his rambles of
exploration, he climbed Mount Washington, estimating it
by his necessarily crude methods to be nine thousand feet
high, an error of twenty-six hundred feet.

But his mind ranged further than botany and higher
than mountain peaks. In his journal, he entered the posi-
tions of Jupiter's moons. Before the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, of which he was a member, he de-
scribed the transit of Mercury across the sun; an eclipse
of the moon and on one occasion, he gave a vivid description
of the Aurora Borealis, which he had witnessed. He was
familiar with the sextant, the telescope, and the microscope
and the electrical machine. He has been called the most
truly scientific mind of his day after Benjamin Franklin
and Benjamin Rush.

His interest in science won for him membership in many
learned societies, including the American Antiquarian So-
ciety, and when he came to Ohio he spent some time looking
over ancient mounds and fortifications, which he declared
to be the work of a departed race. Charles Darwin once
paid his tribute to just such men as Cutler represents, and
in the history of science they have a recognized place. On
account of their powers of observation and interpretation,
they helped to lay the broad foundations upon which others
were to build the higher and fairer structure of science.

III. The Statesman
But our immediate interest in Cutler lies more in the
realm of statesmanship than in science. Among his many
pursuits soon after leaving college was his study and prac-

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement op Ohio 11

tice of law. How successful he was we are not told. The two
professions of medicine and law have more in common than
appears at first glance. Both own an allegiance to order and
causality. Science has been declared by some eminent auth-
orities to be the very best preparation for legal profession.

Having served as chaplain under two military com-
manders, Francis and Titcomb, one can readily see how
such a man as Cutler would know and sympathize with
the demands of the ex-soldiers that they be allowed to settle
on the wide rich lands of the Northwest. It is not strange
that we find his name most intimately connected with the
Ohio land company and the Ordinance of 1787.

In spite of adverse opinion in high places, on the whole
the great Northwest was regarded as a prize to be sought
and fought for when it was necessary. Discovered by La
Salle in 1670, it remained a French possession until after
Wolfe's capture of Quebec, when it came under British
rule. The treaty of 1763 made it a part of the province
of Quebec where it remained for twenty years, that is,
until the close of the American Revolution and the Treaty
of 1783.

After the Revolution, Virginia claimed the Northwest
Territory by the authority of a royal charter and by reason
of its conquest under one of her sons, George Rogers Clark.
New York claimed it through purchases, and treaties made
with the Indians. Massachusetts based her rights to this
domain on her charter from James I, and Connecticut by
reason of a charter from Charles II. There is a story told
that when Governor Winthrop went to England to ask King
Charles for an extension of Connecticut's boundaries to the
Pacific Ocean> the king inquired of the Governor as to just
how great a distance such an extension involved. Where-
upon Winthrop replied that when one stood on the hills
of the western edge of Connecticut, he could just faintly
see the Pacific Ocean. The king was satisfied and signed
on the line, dotted or undotted, we are not told.

But it was Maryland that played a most decisive part in

12 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio

settling the destinies of the Northwest Territory after the
Revolution. For she refused to sign the Articles of Con-
federation until these other states relinquished their rights.
Consequently, New York in 1780, Virginia in 1784, Massa-
chusetts in 1785, and Connecticut in 1786, relinquished their
claims, with minor and what proved to be temporal reser-
vations on the part of Virginia and Connecticut.

In the opening of the Northwest, three motives are to be
traced : the opportunity for settlement, the possibility of
securing public revenue, and the hope of the private gain
that might come from bold, successful enterprise. In our
political and social philosophy, no one of these motives is
discredited in and of itself. We of Anglo-Saxon stock have
a way of working through private or semi-public companies
such as the East India Company, chartered by Queen Eliza-
beth in 1600, the Massachusetts Company by James I in
1629, the Hudson's Bay Company by Charles II in 1670,
the first Ohio Company by George II, and now the Company
of the Ohio Associates commissioned by the Continental
Congress.

This company was formed early in March, 1788. Its direc-
tors were General Rufus Putnam, General Tupper, General
Parsons, Winthrop Sargent, John Mills, and Manasseh
Cutler. They met at the Bunch of Grapes tavern in Boston
with the purpose of purchasing from Congress land in the
Ohio country. Shortly after this meeting, General Parsons
was dispatched to New York where Congress was in session,
in the hope of carrying out this project. After his efforts
had proven a failure, Manasseh Cutler was sent on the
same errand in June, 1787. Cutler found there a threefold
opposition to the plan. Some members of Congress objected
to the low price proposed for this territory, some disliked
the reservation of so much land for education and religion,
and some objected to making any contract whatever. The
final result in Cutler's own words, written under July 27th,
was this: "At half past three I was informed Congress
had passed an ordinance on the terms stated in our letter

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio 13

without the least variation and that the Board of Treasury
was directed to close the contract ... By this ordinance,
we obtained the grant of near five million acres of land,
amounting to three million and a half of dollars, one million
and a half of acres for the Ohio Company and the remainder
for a private speculation, in which many of the most
prominent characters in America are concerned; without
connecting this speculation, similar terms and advantages
could not have been obtained for the Ohio Company."

But along with the authorization of this sale there was
the related problem which Congress had to face, namely
the kind of government to be instituted in this region. This
met with the issuance of the famous Ohio Ordinance already
referred to. Among the many features of that instrument,
it was provided that the Northwest Territory should remain
within the bounds and subject to the jurisdiction of the
United States. This territory, whether it should become
three or five states, should bear its fair share of the national
debt. Its government was to be republican in form. And
slavery was to be forever prohibited. The Anglo-Saxon
race has a record for producing unique political documents.
There were the Magna Charta, the Mayflower Compact,
the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence. And
here was the Ordinance of 1787 that was to apply to a
region imperial in size and was to effect the ultimate form
of the Constitution itself.

This Ohio Ordinance was so broad in its scope that it
foreshadowed all the important needs for many years to
come. It was so just in its purposes and so deep in its
social sympathies that it has called forth the highest praise
from many competent authorities. Webster said of it: "We
are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity. We
help perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus, but I
doubt whether any single law of any lawgiver ancient or
modern has produced effects of a more distinct, marked
and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787."

14 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio

Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase gave his testimony:
"Never probably in the history of the world did a measure
of legislation so accurately fulfill and yet so mightily exceed
the anticipation of its legislators."

Considerable controversy has arisen over the authorship
of this famous document. Webster once assigned it to
Nathaniel Dane of Massachusetts, but later allowed that
some of its provisions should be credited to Manasseh Cutler.

Thomas Benton of Missouri ascribed it to the pen of
Thomas Jefferson. President King of Columbia University
claimed the authorship of the anti-slavery sections for his
father, Rufus King.

Few today would claim it in its entirety for any one
man. It is highly probable that it was of composite origin.
Cutler's own words, after seeing the document in its final
form, are these: "The amendments I proposed have all
been made except one and that is better qualified."

Most authorities today would assign to Manasseh Cutler
those portions of the Ordinance which prohibited slavery,
provided for education, and secured freedom of worship
for all within its jurisdiction. "Make the land worth
having," said Cutler to the Congress. "Unless you do, we
do not want it." Here is the answer to those who think
Cutler was only a lobbyist, spending his energy either in
rolling logs or working buttonholes. "Exclude slavery for-
ever . . . and we will buy your land and help you pay your
debts, allow it to enter and not a penny will we invest."

Cutler's adventures in statecraft were to enable him to
leave behind a record of having served two terms in the
Massachusetts legislature, two terms in the national con-
gress, and having had the refusal of a supreme court judge-
ship in Ohio offered him by George Washington. His ver-
satility reminds one of a confession of Henry Ward Beecher.
Someone, after listening to him, asked him what he studied.
His reply was, "Everything, everything, except theology."
Cutler might have made a similar reply.

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio 15

IV. Colonizer and Founder

Having helped in the organization of the Ohio Land
Company, in securing its contract for western lands, and
having been instrumental in both framing and securing
the Ordinance, what was more fitting then that Manasseh
Cutler should make a journey in person to the Ohio Valley?
In his journal we find this entry:

"Lord's Day, July the 20th (1787) Informed the people
of my intention to set out on my journey. Relinquished my
salary and they supply the pulpit.

"Monday, July 21st Set out for the Ohio country."

At least one man, a brother minister, deprecated his
going and said so. The Reverend Dr. Deane of Portland
wrote him: "Your determination on a Southern adventure
much afflicts me. Why must you remove to so awful a
distance? You will mar my plan of growing in natural
philosophy. As I glide into the evening of life I would
sacrifice much to get you nearer to me. But as for your
Garden of Eden, the fruit there looks too much like for-
bidden. But I wish you the blessing of Heaven on your
undertakings."

Under the date of July twenty-first there is a second
reading :

"Set out from Ipswich on a journey to the Ohio and
Muskingum. Mr. Ephm. Kendall of Ipswich was gone to
Salem, where he with Mr. Peter Oliver, joined me on horse-
back. I set out myself in a sulky. Made some little stop in
Salem. We dined at Newhall's in company with Judge
Gushing, and the Attorney-General, Mr. Paine. We were
detained several hours in Boston. Left the town about sun-
set, having a prodigious number of letters for Muskingum.
Lodged at Major Whiting's in Roxbury, 34 miles."

The journal tells of his day by day progress to the south
and west until he reached Coxe's Fort. Here he met a
party of pioneers ready to take boat for a voyage down
the Ohio river. Under Friday, August fifteenth we find an
entry which shows the open-mindedness of Cutler and the

16 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio

true pioneer spirit in mechanics as well as in exploration
and organization:

"This morning we went pretty early to the boat. General
Tupper had mentioned to me a mode of constructing a
machine to work in the head or stern of a boat instead of
oars. It appeared to me highly probable it might succeed.
I therefore proposed that we should make the experiment.
Assisted by a number of the people, we went to work, and
constructed a machine in the form of a screw with short
blades and placed it in the stern of the boat, which we
turned with a crank. It succeeded to admiration and I think
it a very useful discovery."

V. Spiritual Leader

On Tuesday, August nineteenth, Cutler and his party
landed at Marietta, seven hundred and fifty-one miles from
home. He was graciously received by General Rufus Put-
nam, who invited him to lodgings in his tent. Here Cutler
remained about three weeks, preaching on three successive
Sundays at the famous Block House on Campus Martius.
His first sermon, preached on August twenty-fourth, was
based on the text, Malachai 1 :11.

"For from the rising of the sun, even unto the going
down of the same my name shall be great among the
Gentiles and in every place incense shall be offered unto
my name and a peace offering, for my name shall be great
among the heathen saith the Lord of Hosts."

From the modern point of view the sermon can be criti-
cized as to its anthropology, its theory of inspiration and
its division of history into secular and! divine. But we also
remember that the doctrine of evolution, the psychology
of religion and the unity of history were doctrines far in
the future even for the most liberal churches. That the
sermon has so much for our generation is its significant
feature. His theme might well have been stated "The Provi-
dence of God in our National History." He sees the great
American Epic as the unfolding of the plan of God. In
the creating, development, discovery, resources, govern-

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio 17

ment, and destiny of America, he sees man's fairest oppor-
tunity and his noblest responsibilities. To enter into this
inheritance, there is a call for personal consecration. To
promote civilization and to secure social happiness, the life
of the individual must incorporate personal virtue. It be-
comes us then as intelligent and dependent beings to devote
ourselves to the service of him from whom all blessings
flow. "Happy is that people whose God is the Lord."

Joseph Felt, writing in 1834, said of this service in the
Block House: "Considering the object and the hopes of
himself and his audience, the hardships they endured, their
perils from wild beasts, disease and jealous plotting savages,
the scene of such a sacred occasion must have appeared
with lights and shadows, novel to their perceptions, ro-
mantic to their imagination, attractive to their attention,
impressive to their minds and affecting to their hearts."

His message of individual responsibilty under free gov-
ernment is all important for us today. It was proclaimed
in the wilderness, but the machine age has not dimmed its
luster nor lessened its vitality. The enemies of democracy
like to point out its shortcomings and to encourage the
belief that its days are numbered. To them democracy is a
dinosaur, all bulk and no brains; it is slow, costly and
ineffective ; soon it will be superseded by Facism, say some ;
by Communism, say others. Our generation can do no
better than return to Cutler and partake of his confidence
and vision. Freedom is still our richest heritage: freedom
of speech, freefdom of the press, freedom of assembly,
freedom of thought and worship. When any one of these
is lost, all the rest are in danger, and democracy is threaten-
ed. But Cutler goes below the surface of democracy, deeper
than freedom, for he proclaims a truth on a still more basic
level. Below freedom lies personal virtue, personal integrity,
and personal responsibility.

Education, which was one of his primary interests, has
multiplied its followers by millions since his day; it has
builded its halls and towers far beyond any extent of his

18 Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio

imagination; it has experimented widely differentiating
kinds, means, and ends within its own bounds, but its high-
est function as a corollary of free government, a truth
which Cutler saw, we have not transcended. Marietta, Ohio,
and the United States are still committed to the place he
gave education and will remember him as pioneer, organizer,
and seer.

Were we to look for his analogue in Puritan history, we
might well choose John White of Dorchester, England. White
never came to America. His name has been practically
unknown to us. But modern, historians are recognizing that
he promoted the Dorchester Adventurers who settled Cape
Ann. He organized another company to settle the lands be-
tween the Charles and the Merrimac rivers. He secured
settlers, aroused public interest, obtained a royal charter,
allayed public suspicion, enabling Winthrop's fleet to sail,
and all this while laboring in his own parish in Dorchester.
Today Massachusetts affectionately remembers him as one
of the founders and builders of the Bay Colony. Cutler is
like White.

Manasseh Cutler visited Ohio, but he never resided here.
He loved Ohio and he labored with all his talents that Ohio
might come into being and grow into a great and worthy
state. He loved Ohio because also he loved his country and
his fellow men.

Manasseh Cutler was a good man and was esteemed by
the good men of all parties. He numbered among his friends
men such as Putnam, Franklin, and Washington. It has
been said that Washington loved Putnam, and Putnam was
a man after Washington's own heart. And that Franklin
loved Manasseh Cutler, and that Manasseh Cutler was a
man after Franklin's own heart.

Manasseh Cutler was affectionate and hospitable. He was
sociable and democratic. He prized knowledge and he kept
his faith in what Bismarck called the imponderables, our
ideals. He was a man of talent, discriminating observation,
sound judgment, a courageous and enterprising spirit. He

Manasseh Cutler and the Settlement of Ohio 19

was a student of nature, a minister of the church, a lover
of his country, and a brother to his fellow man.

What John Harvard is to Harvard College and to educa-
tion in Massachusetts, Manasseh Cutler is to Marietta Col-
lege and is to the schools of Ohio. His bust should be in
every school house. What Roger Williams is to Rhode
Island, that Manasseh Cutler is to Ohio. What Thomas
Hooker is to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, Man-
asseh Cutler is to the Ordinance of 1787. Both influenced
the formation of the Constitution of the United States.

Today, Manasseh Cutler's memory is affectionately
cherished, his work is gratefully acknowledged, and his
character is honored wherever his name is known.